7 Years-Working Record

7 Years, a song recorded by Lukas Graham was the stimulus that we were given. This song is based on a 7 year old boy (Lukas Graham) and how he grows up, all the way to 60 years of age. Throughout the stimulus there is a theme of depression and sadness growing, and his ambitions are getting less and less as the age increases. As you can see in this quote, this is the original ambitious mindset from a young 7/11 year old.
Soon I’ll be sixty years old, my daddy got sixty-one
Remember life, and then your life becomes a better one
I made a man so happy when I wrote a letter once
I hope my children come and visit once or twice a month

Soon I’ll be sixty years old, will I think the world is cold
Or will I have a lot of children who can warm me?
Soon I’ll be sixty years old

Soon I’ll be sixty years old, will I think the world is cold
Or will I have a lot of children who can warm me?
Soon I’ll be sixty years old.

This is the passage that shows his lack of enthusiasm for life at this stage in his life and shows how he will get increasingly unhappy.

This stimulus inspired me to create a performance about the changing emotions of a person throughout the important events in their life. For example, when Lukas Graham was 20/30 in the performance was creating music and being recognised and even becoming famous.

Item 1

Description of the characters:

In my original performance I performed the character called Lukas throughout various ages through his life. When he was 7 years old he was a lonely boy, and his mother was the only person who really cared about his life. She told him to go outside and get friends. His body position was slouched and we could see him often looking down at the floor throughout this part of his life.

At 11 years old he was being a rebelious child, smoking and drinking with his friends. He used slang in this part of his life and wasn’t taking music very seriously, although this would develop into the biggest part of his life. He acted like his life was not going anywhere and he had no strong ambition to work towards. I showed this by having quite a low tone and he was slouched.

20 years old was one of the biggest moments in his life, where he was writing songs properly and realising that music can change his life. The body language was a lot more positive, and his posture being better. Also, he started to speak in a more formal tone, as he matured from the last time we saw him.

When he reached 30 years of age, he was at the peak of his career, and it is when he is enjoying the fame, and also meeting his fans. He is now more reserved and mature with his language, as a famous singer should be. His movement was very relaxed also as he believed he had finally reached the success he has been aiming for. When meeting his fans he is also seen as very modest.

The final event that was performed is the age of 60. This is when he is long forgotten and nobody really remembers who he is. He uses spoken thought to explain the fact that his children do not visit him. He seems very lonely and he is isolated, in a nursing home. He is now once again slouched with a low tone of voice as he realises he has no ambitions anymore.

Item 2

Firstly, the duologue will consist of me (Josh Ali) and Amjad King. We have come to the conclusion that we will both be performing as the stimulus’ main character, although at different stages in his life. I will be performing the extract of the stimulus where Lukas Graham is 60 years of age, and Amjad will be performing the characters younger form (11 years old).

It is crucial that during the performance and also the presentations that we speak about and perform within the genre of this stimulus. This can be developed with lighting ideas, costumes and other directing plans.

During the performance, I do plan to use effects such as a spoken thought. My thought process while making this decision was that I wanted to engage with the audience as much as possible, and I feel as if this is one of the best ways to interact with them. It also gives a great insight and a very different perspective as to what is going on in the characters mind. This spoken thought will also help greatly to portray the emotions felt by the character, and will be ideal, since a spoken thought is most effective when the performer is describing extreme emotions e.g depression, anger, sadness.

Extending on the focus of spoken thought, I decided to use it as it gives the audience a better idea of the depression that the character is facing, which we would not usually see if there was no spoken thought and it was just a normal performance.

The topic of depression is one that is used entirely throughout the 60 year old Lukas Graham’s part of the performance. Another technique other than spoken thought that I used to display this was the body language. Often I was crouched over, talking to the floor for the majority of the performance. I also sat down for the performance to make my body as small as possible, to indicate loneliness and isolation. Here are two screenshots that show the technique of using different body movement, positioning and language.

Relating back to the context of the stimulus, the emotions of my character at his age (60) will be mostly helplessness, a feeling of being neglected, and sadness, since in the song, “I hope my children come and visit once or twice a month” is an extremely powerful phrase, and shows how his life isn’t hugely recognised by others, even other members of his family, especially his own children. This is something that during the performance, will be picked up on, as drama in general often has a strong relation to family and love. However, in the stimulus we have been given, family is something that starts off as very valuable for Lukas Graham, as he describes words from his father many a time, “Go get yourself a wife or you’ll be lonely” being an example of that. Later on, at the age of 60, family is something that is very precious to the character, but he is not given much attention to anymore by the other characters. “Some are still out seeking glory” is the way that this character sees the situation.

Item 3

This section of my working record is the costume presentation. I chose costume to present as its something that I believe can influence an audiences ideas about characters and their emotions.

The 60 year old was wearing a scruffy white t-shirt, and plain black trousers. I chose this as it is a very basic choice and the scruffyness presented isolation and no idea of what is going on.

In terms of the 11 year old, I decided that Amjad should wear shorts, high socks and a shirt. This is because an 11 year old is usually quite happy and dresses as if they are in a good mood.

The colour scheme of the performance for the 60 year old was black and white. These are two very bland colours and that is what I aimed to direct on the character. However, for the 11 year old, bright colours which had no specific pattern were used. This is because this character often looked clueless, and was never really sure of what was going on during the whole performance.

An area of development for this section is that I should’ve extended on my spoken presentation and spoke about why I would use these types of clothes more in depth.

Evaluation

I analysed another performers performance, Amjad’s. His piece that I analysed was also the performance I was involved in. What I think Amjad did well was that he expressed the emotions he was trying to show to the audience very clearly. These emotions were happiness, and also, you could see that the 11 year old character was very ambitious. This was shown by Amjad’s body language and movement. Even the slightest details such as swinging his legs really did help to portray a happy young child. He used spoken thought throughout the performance and this helped the audience to get an even more detailed character profile.

The original performance which had 5 people performing showed the ages 20/30 of Lukas Graham being very happy with his life. However in that performance, we performed every age group (7,11,20,30,60). In the second performance, I only focused on 2 age groups which were 11 and 60. The reason for me and Amjad picking these ages is because they contrast massively. The 11 year old in that particular performance is enjoying life, even though he is quite unsure of what is going on most of the time. However, the 60 year old’s part of the performance shows the depression of his later life.

One area for improvement for the overall performances is that I wish I had developed the first original improvised performance. This is because I felt that it lacked organisation, and there wasn’t as much time as I would’ve liked to improve the performance such as lights, more spoken thoughts and other techniques which could’ve made the performance stronger.